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The Beginning Is the Most Important Part of the Work

We scheduled meetings and talked about our vision, mission, goals, roles, and
responsibilities in this intranet project. We drafted documents that stated
all of the above in addition to outlining the project criteria and stating business
requirements.

These were some of our main goals or objectives:

Cleaner, easier, more portal-like look and feel, almost fun to use.

Emphasis on white space and readability.

Easier navigation; no Back button needed and fewer clicks.

Redesigned home page with a more aesthetically balanced appearance.

Serving as the "launching pad" for most (if not all) normal
tasks and the portal through which users retrieved relevant information.

Vehicle for the communication of important company news and an alternative
to broadcast emails. Preferred communication method for all employees.

Restricted access to content based on login information, thus allowing
us to "hide" some information and tailor menu options to certain
groups or departments.

Non-developers within the various business units to have control over
and the ability to update some of their own content, including news items,
organizational charts, department links, etc.

We next discussed the problems we had with the current intranet and what we
would like to do to correct them. This was a very touchy subject, since the
original developers were part of this discussion. However, everyone remained
very professional, and they did a good job of putting any personal feelings
aside. This was a very important step toward beginning our relationship as a
team. Our project could easily have failed if the original developers had shut
down to change and constructive criticism, or taken any of the comments personally.

We also talked to other organizations (mainly insurance companies comparable
to our own business) and asked some of them to come in and show us what they
had done. We talked to several vendors about our options and tried a few demos.
We asked users what they wanted. We attended an intranets conference where we
talked to several more vendors.

And all this before we designed the first graphic or wrote the first line
of code.